Combat

Armed to the teeth with a shortsword, a dagger, an archaic and mentally deranged patron, and dangerous illithid power, Elerlae doesn't hesitate to charge right into the fray, though he does know when to hang back and rely on his magic to both alter and play the battlefield from a safe distance away.

Personality

BLUNT | AVERSE | RESOLUTE

Likes

• Raisin buns
• Bard dirges

Dislikes

• Overly-cheery people
• Sunlight

Backstory

Native to the great city of Menzoberranzan, Elerlae grew up indoctrinated by Lolth and her believers, and pledged her life to the Queen of Spiders. She was so unbelievably dedicated that she devised a plan to allow herself to be captured in a raid, and sold as a slave in Baldur's Gate. This granted her access to surface Drow, the ones who turned from Lolth, and used her network of contacts from the Underdark to kidnap and reclaim them, taking them back to Menzoberranzan. If they did not turn, they would be killed, as they should be.

Elerlae's master, a man who took great delight in having a variety of rare people and creatures in his own strange idea of a menagerie, enjoyed having a bright red-eyed Lolth-sworn Drow in his collection to show off to his friends. She played the part well, even acting feral and wild for the entertainment of his guests, since this would usually make him more amicable. He grew so used to her mannerisms and habits that she wasn't always as closely monitored as she should be. During the night, she would escape from the menagerie, meet with her Drow contacts, and roam the house if she had time. In doing so, she came across her master's vast collection of magical artefacts, and would regularly look through them out of curiosity. One of these times, she happened upon an elaborate knife, so long that it could be considered a shortsword. She realized after handling it that there was some entity bound to it. It didn't take her long to realize that it was a fragment of the soul of Halaster Blackcloak himself, a name that Elerlae knew extremely well. With her limited magical capabilities, she was able to establish rudimentary speech with Halaster, and sought to kill her boredom listening to him tell wild tales of his arcane insanity, even if it did involve killing her people on occasion. Halaster would routinely plead with Elerlae to take the knife with her, to keep him in her possession, but she would not. She had no way to hide a blade like that anywhere in the menagerie, and she didn't know why she would to begin with. Halaster was adamant about it, promising her that they could be powerful together, but power wasn't something that Elerlae needed, much to Halaster's chagrin.

However, this all came to an abrupt end the day the nautiloid arrived in Baldur's Gate. Tentacles and dragon fire ravaged the city, and the inhabitants of the menagerie were quick to scatter and run for their lives when the master's house took a massive hit, leaving most of it destroyed. Being unarmed, Elerlae had the common sense to try to find a weapon, and found most of the artefacts that her master had were crushed and destroyed under the flaming rubble of the house. Halaster's knife, however, was still there, and he was still urging her to use the blade, to accept his power, telling her that he would keep her safe, all she had to do was use it. Not wanting to take her chances unarmed, she picked up the weapon, unknowingly making a pact with a very dead, very insane wizard.

Ultimately, it helped very little, as the nautiloid picked her up without even a struggle. Brought aboard the nautiloid, Elerlae was infected with a Mind Flayer parasite, and thus locked in her role as the unwilling hero of a story that was only just starting to be told.